At least USC did not get blown out until the final two minutes of No. 1-ranked Arizona’s 73-53 victory on Sunday night before a season-high crowd of 8,347 at the Galen Center.

That probably qualifies as a moral victory during Andy Enfield’s inaugural season, which might not see too many actual victories in conference play. Especially against a team as good as the Wildcats.

“I’m not happy,” Enfield said. “I’m proud of our effort, but we also are making some mistakes.”

The Trojans (9-7, 0-3) were actually within five points (48-43) with less than 10 minutes left in the game but wore down against the talented Wildcats (17-0, 4-0).

“I thought we had a chance to stay in the game at that point,” Enfield said. “But we just didn’t do it.”

It was a little too hard to ignore the talent gap, but USC players found solace in the performance, especially a week after getting embarrassed by UCLA at Pauley Pavilion.

“We battled the No. 1 team in the country for most of the game,” USC guard Pe’Shon Howard said. “If we play defense like this in the rest of our Pac-12 games, we’ll be fine. There are a lot of positives to take from this.”

One positive was freshman forward Strahinja Gavrilovic, who scored a career-high 10 points in 19 minutes.

“I used my chance and tried to play aggressively,” Gavrilovic said. “Unfortunately, we played really good basketball for 35 minutes but took some bad shots and had bad turnovers.”

USC forward Nikola Jovanovic was not so fortunate, with five turnovers and eight points in 28 minutes. Byron Wesley led the Trojans with 18 points but was overshadowed by Arizona forward Brandon Ashley and guard T.J. McConnell, who each scored 19 points.

Perhaps to the Trojans’ credit, they hung tough with the Wildcats, which is probably admirable for a team that looks destined to finish near the bottom of the Pacific-12 Conference standings.

It remains a valid question when USC will actually win its first conference game, with road games coming up against Utah (12-4) and Colorado (14-3).

“If we can give that kind of effort and energy, we’ll be fine,” Enfield said.

USC trailed 34-31 at halftime, but the Wildcats went on a 7-0 run to start the second half and led 41-31 with 17:18 remaining.

The crowd was easily the largest of the season, and so many USC students attended that there was still a long line that wrapped outside the arena with six minutes to go in the first half.

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One reason the crowd was so big was that there was a large Arizona contingent.

“In this arena, there is an opportunity for fans to come in and make it a hospitable environment for us,” Arizona coach Sean Miller said.

Enfield was equally grateful for the atmosphere.

“Hopefully, if we keep getting better and better, we’ll have more crowds like this,” he said.

Arizona has set a school record by winning its first 17 games.

“We all will cherish this school record because when you break a University of Arizona basketball record, it means a lot because of the tradition,” Miller said.

Notes >> Lakers guard Nick Young, who played for USC, and forward Jordan Hill, who played for Arizona, attended the game together. Young wore a USC sweatshirt while Hill wore an Arizona shirt. Also in the crowd was former Laker and Arizona player Luke Walton, who sat a few seats from USC athletic director Pat Haden. ... The Pac-12 schedule does not make USC go to Tucson to play Arizona, so the teams will only face each other again if they play in the conference tournament. ... USC’s 53 points on Sunday night was a season low. The previous low was 60 against Arizona State on Thursday night.